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Imaging Tip of the Day: Inkscape Open Source SVG editor
Looking for a powerful, open source scalable vector graphics editor? Today's Imaging Tip, Inkscape 0.42, is just the answer. This fully W3C-compliant, cross-platform SVG powerhouse is packing serious heat with support for basic shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, grouping, Creative Commons meta-data (BIG points), node-editing, layers, complex path operations, text-on-path, and SVG XML editing. It can also bring in EPS, Postscript, JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.
When you're finished digesting all that, check out their extensive screenshots and go snag yourself a copy for Win, Linux or OSX.
Comments
11
Subscribe to commentsTodd PlantsJul 29th 2005 11:23AM
As a very ameteur designer who only has projects like this evry few months, I'm excited by quality open source competitors to Photoshop (GIMP) and Illustrator (Inkscape). One thing I've never found, though, is a good replacement for Indesign. I actually have an old (os 9!) version of Pagemaker installed on my iMac now, but I'd love to get an OS X native app for light desktop publishing.
Ideas?
daniloJul 29th 2005 12:31PM
a replacement for pagemaker/inDesign is called Scribus. it's not good as those progs, but it is usable... :)
Patrick WynneJul 29th 2005 2:36PM
I've been watching Inkscape for a while and anxiously awaiting an OS X version that didn't require me to install fink. So, all joyous about the 0.42 release, I downloaded it, started it up and...
... nothing.
The Inkscape icon shows up briefly in my Dock, X11 launches and then the Inkscape icon disappears and I get nothing.
Darn. I guess I'll have to do some fiddling to try and get it working because I really am excited about this app.
SteveJul 29th 2005 3:16PM
For the record, The mac version works flawlessly on my OS 10.3.9
Pat,
You don't use fink!? Unix is what makes OS X so good. Don't miss out on the fun! :)
ThomasJul 29th 2005 3:35PM
What current browsers support SVG?
Patrick WynneJul 29th 2005 4:01PM
I've tried to use fink, going all the way back to Jaguar, but it never seems to work for me and I don't know enough about Unixy stuff to figure out why not. It's on my list of stuff to do, but it's a low priority, especially now that Inkscape has an OS X binary. The only other apps I really want are Bluefish, Amaya and Scribus.
Ted GouldJul 30th 2005 1:09AM
I can't find the link right now, but the start up issue on Mac OS X is based on the installation of X not creating the font cache. You can fix it by running this:
sudo fc-cache
NiloyJul 30th 2005 11:37PM
Hey, this is cool stuff. Thanks.
StokesJul 31st 2005 3:29PM
I was able to get Inkscape running w/ Mac OS 10.4 by running the X11 server first, then double-clicking Inkscape. Just running Inkscape and letting it launch X11 got the 'nothing happened' problem that others described.
Patrick WynneJul 31st 2005 9:18PM
Hey Ted, that worked! Thanks a bunch!
MikeAug 1st 2005 4:52PM
Another good Illustrator alternative available for Windows and Linux (not sure about BSD or OSX) is Sodipodi. I think Inkscape will prove to be a better prog, but (I believe) Sodipodi is a little older so it's fairly mature by now.